Avid majors on remote collaboration

Reflecting the new realities of post production, Avid is highlighting Media Composer and Microsoft Teams collaboration at NAB.

NAB is hosting some interesting tech demos from Avid that leverage its long-standing collaboration with Microsoft, the highlight of which is what the company likes to refer to as “over-the-shoulder” remote collaboration. Supported in the most recent release of Media Composer, it uses the popular NLE’s SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) output to allow editors to stream high-res content to Microsoft Teams users.

The idea is that by enabling secure streaming to any device — directly out of Media Composer itself or as one of many receive points possible when Haivision Hub or Gateway are included in the workflow — a  “third monitor” collaborative experience for Teams accelerates tasks such as content review by producers, directors, and other members of the production staff, including clients.

There are, of course, already ways of doing this involving third party software, but being able to do it more quickly and more simply is always a good target to aim for as the industry continues to refine remote workflows. And the security is good. SRT provides end-to-end 128/256-bit AES encryption, and users can additionally restrict client access to Media Composer output. Teams can connect to a Haivision Gateway on premises or in the cloud to enable stream replication and firewall traversal so that devices behind a firewall can reach streams without breaching network security.

Elsewhere, Avid is already integrated with Microsoft Azure for cloud-based services such as Avid | Edit On Demand. The two companies have further collaborated on another tech preview at the show of interest to the live production market, which features MediaCentral | Stream demonstrating IP contribution into and out of Avid | Edit On Demand. Supporting IP contribution from anywhere and from any device – including cameras, encoders and inevitably (and increasingly) mobile devices – this integration is going to enable the ever faster ingest of streams for television news and sports production, which is going to be a growing theme as 5G contribution takes root in production workflows.

Market availability of these technology previews will apparently be announced at a future date.